Elsa Corbluth aged 13 | |
Elsa Corbluth | |
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Young heroine
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Elsa Corbluth rescued a young child from a river in the 1940s when she was only 13.
Elsa and her family moved to Salisbury at the beginning of World War Two, when she was 11. She was a real tomboy at heart and would enjoy regular swimming trips to the Salisbury River Avon.
She tells Paul Heiney about one swimming trip from her childhood that is never far from her mind.
Elsa is also a poet and this is the extract from Elsa's unpublished poem Ball in The Water.
How could I have known
that, eighteen years after that time,
frost growing at the window
and high tide of snow,
on to the white-towelled bank of my own breast
my hands should take the head
and then the rest
of my real son,
lolled, coolly sleeping
almost too long,
till someone turned,
bringing soft drops of water to begin
the sound of him, the struggling,
and in the stinging winter morning sun
had brought him home,
my own, my river child.
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Listen to Joe Shaw's story
The Planet Iceland by Elsa Corbluth, published by Peterloo Poets - ISBN: 1-871471-75-3 |
